It was not something I particularly pursued. As many other photographers I started photographing friends and people relating to my regular live. I always found attracted to dance and body expression. Some of my friends were dancers and the option to shoot them nude came very naturally. Photographing nudity, like any other photograph, is very much about projecting ourselves. I think there is a lot of me on how I photograph nude bodies.

Both. I think the eroticism is always on the eyes of the beholder but there is also an inherent eroticism on the images, but often this is just one of the elements and often not the most important.

Making the model comfortable is very much about personality and about how I connect with the person. I’m very interested on the people I work with and in engaging with them. The process is very smooth and natural. Not everyone feels the same way when they have to undress before a person for the first time and some people need more time than others. I like working with people who never posed nude before. It’s nice to see how quick they relax, and they forget they are nude. Often, they get very surprised how easy this is.

There is not a particular reason. I consider all my work a self-portrait, but on my absence. I’m not in the photos. I like to have control on the composition I can see on the viewfinder and I this is something I can’t control the same way if I’m before the camera and not behind. Maybe one day I try to be on the other side.

Social media platforms don’t show context. A photograph like a word needs a context and someone who “speak” the language to be understood. When I post an image on Instagram, I have no information about the context. I don’t know where the viewer is and what the viewer is going to see before and after my image. The context of any post is subject to an algorithm. Social media is not about photography but about communicating things including photography. Social media is great to engage with many people it would be complicated otherwise but it’s terrible to show photographic works in a meaningful way.

Today Instagram guidelines has censorship in the way that they impose a control to what people can say and share, but the problem is not weather Instagram rules make sense or not but the concentration of traffic on Instagram. Four or five social media applications under the hands of the same instances have the control of almost all social media connections. There is no alternative to their rules. The traditional channels of publications and galleries are more restrictive today than before and the possibilities of people to engage with larger audiences out of these four or five platforms are near to zero. The problem of Instagram is not if the rules are good or bad. I don’t have particular concern with the rules themselves. The problem is that Instagram is the only voice and judge with no possibility for the people to say anything and they are out of the scrutiny of any control. The secret of democracy is having an effective separation of powers where one instance is control by not one but many others. Today Instagram is the closest thing to a dictatorship we have in our society when we refer to freedom of speech. We are good as long as we obey otherwise, we are “removed”.

I do nothing. I understood how the rules on Instagram work, and I accept it. It’s bigger than me individually. I simply don’t post my work on Instagram. I only post regular images to keep engaging with my audience, which is a part I really like. I have met amazing people on Instagram. I don’t want to miss that but I don’t think Instagram is the place to show work. Instagram is almost a dangerous place to show work. Recently I made a series of booklets showing my work with no restrictions and now I’m preparing two books and two new series of booklets. Unfortunately, because of the cost there are less opportunities to show work in gallery exhibitions and I think publishing is a really nice alternative to social media for the artists to show work and for those who admire the work of an artist to provide support by the small contribution of buying the publications. Not everyone can buy prints and even for those who can buy prints from time to time like to have access to publications where photographs can be seen in the right context.

Instagram is a great tool to promote publications but not to show work. I often say that social media is today the TV of the 90’s. Lots of colors and lots of noise with lots of advertisement and some occasional great quality contents we don’t want to miss. If Instagram is good for communication, let’s use it for that.

This is a complex issue. I think there have been significant changes but I’m not sure if they are enough or not in the right direction. Lots of young and not so young people seems to be obsessed with getting some ideal body image and this may cause harm and frustration. It’s not a question of how many “ideal bodies” are present on the market but how much people feel under pressure to emulate this or that. I think today there are more “ideal body” references in terms of shape, race or background than 10 years ago and this is great. I hope there are more in the future, but on the other hand, I think the pressure to emulate one ideal is much bigger today than before when the celebrities were on TV looking stratospheric to our ordinary lives. Today celebrities and models are on our phones doing “regular” things as we do and the temptation to feel the pressure to emulate them is bigger today than before.